Control Issues

The streets of the Dual Springs neighborhood, a migrant-worker hub in northern Beijing, are deserted. That's no surprise: more than 13,000 people have been quarantined in China's capital to halt the insidious spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and even those not under house arrest have hunkered down at home in a massive rite of self-isolation. But the shacks of Dual Springs have as few people inside as outside. Despite an April 30 governmental edict ordering migrant workers to stay put to prevent them spreading the disease farther into the nation's interior, most of Beijing's outlying shantytowns have emptied as...